site redesign project: please provide input

wildviper

Hi All,

I have taken on the project to redesign my site on my own. I have learnt XHTML and CSS a little bit and trying to see how far I can go.

Please have a look at these two pages and let me know how you like the new one?

Old one: http://www.fotomango.com/faq.html

New one: http://www.fotomango.com/faq1.html

I hope the new one even works (trying Ajax and Web 2.0), but appreciate any feedback.

Edit: Appreciate it if you can please give me your OS, Browser name and version info. Oh, the resolution also. Thank you.

Kulla

hi

the new one looks good, better than old one imho, but I would add some kind of color change on mouse over and change links color from navy blue to some other color that fits background

also you can maybe change size of the columns, play with it so maybe you can find the one that is looking better, this one is oversized for 1 or 2 px imho

wildviper

thanx for that info. Not sure what you mean by 1 or 2 px? is it too big for your screen?

actually, can you give me your OS, Browser name and version please also? Oh, the resolution also.

I am going to put that in my original post for others too.

THanx

Kulla

wildviper wrote:

thanx for that info. Not sure what you mean by 1 or 2 px? is it too big for your screen?

actually, can you give me your OS, Browser name and version please also? Oh, the resolution also.

I am going to put that in my original post for others too.

THanx

I think it's too big, I would reduce height from 25px to maybe 20-22px

OS is xp pro sp2, firefox 3.0.5 and 1920x1200px res

wildviper

Kulla wrote:

I think it's too big, I would reduce height from 25px to maybe 20-22px

OS is xp pro sp2, firefox 3.0.5 and 1920x1200px res

Change is Done to 22px now. How did you know it was 25 pix anyways? You are dead on and I did that in the CSS file. You can view that?

As for the color of the link..I am trying, but it seems there is a bug somewhere. I can't change it. Yet, this page which links to the same CSS file is ok. http://www.fotomango.com/aboutus.html


Thanx.

Kulla

wildviper wrote:

Change is Done to 22px now. How did you know it was 25 pix anyways? You are dead on and I did that in the CSS file. You can view that?

As for the color of the link..I am trying, but it seems there is a bug somewhere. I can't change it. Yet, this page which links to the same CSS file is ok. http://www.fotomango.com/aboutus.html


Thanx.

For the link I think that's the browsers default color, and it won't display css one if the checkbox "Allow pages to display their own colors instead of those I selected above" is checked

In Firefox you can add Web developer plugin that enables you to check lot of things directly, size, names, and lot of other things of elements on the page. There is also part in which you can live edit css and see changes direct on the page.

wildviper

bump

FedererPhoto

Works well on XP 64bit, IE7.

Like the new one better than the old, but would request a 'expand all' button... sometimes I just want to 'read' a FAQ rahter than look for questions. But that's me.

wildviper

FedererPhoto wrote:

Works well on XP 64bit, IE7.

Like the new one better than the old, but would request a 'expand all' button... sometimes I just want to 'read' a FAQ rahter than look for questions. But that's me.

Thanx. I am going to try and put that expand all. Not sure how, but will see.

patrick.danger

Macintosh - 1920 x 1200 - WebKit (Safari, Chrome, etc.)

Good work, wildviper, in reigning in that page a bit. You imposed good structure, and you did what lots of people don't think to when drawing up an FAQ by hand: provide an index! In this case, your index itself expands to give the answers.

A few notes:

a) in your css, you have the body tag sized at 100% and you're hiding the overflow. This means that you get no scrollbars. This is a particular issue with the original, which flowed down past the bottom of the page. try resizing your browser window to be smaller than your content rectangle ... ? There's literally no way to see what's being clipped unless you can make your window bigger than the content of the page.

b) the font face in your logo is great, sophisticated and clean, which makes the Verdana look completely out of place. your font choices reflect you and your personal tastes and aesthetics, and they are worth really taking time to select because what they communicate about you to a user can be very subtle, and very subversive. There aren't a lot of "web-safe" fonts out there, so it's pretty easy to throw them all up and see what you think, but probably the best thing you can do is look around on the web a bit and find some FAQ's that are very professionally presented and use those as a guide.

c) maybe consider darkening the background color of your page? Going with a dark background is a great choice for a site where you're communicating a lot of images, but light text on that dark background can be hard to read, especially paragraphs. The key to pulling this off is contrast, you want to push the light and dark color farther apart without going overboard (white on black can be just as heard to read). I would try pulling the background color down to around rgb(30,30,30) and seeing if that helps your content pop a little more.

Great effort, _great_ logo. Keep it up!

wildviper

thanx for those tips. I have actually taken on to redesigning the whole site. I will keep your recommendations in mind during that.

As for the fonts, unfortunately, as you said, there just aren't that many choices.

But once again, I will keep these in mind. I am definitely sticking with the new faq style for the new redesign.